....and perhaps they would have remained so if my nerves from the airplane (Seriously, what was I thinking trying to knit lace on a plane given my phobias?!) hadn't forced me to tear the whole thing out and redo it twice.

....or maybe it was the fact that trying to work on lace during the busy and emotional week of a beloved family member's funeral is just not a good idea.

....or it could just be as simple as I didn't like the way it was actually turning out, and I thought the repeats were boring.

Whatever the case may be, when I got home I tucked the whole thing away and tried to forget about it. I had absolutely no desire to work on it, and in my experience that's not at all a good sign.

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I knew I was never going to finish that shawl, and so I finally frogged the whole thing, rewound the yarn and put the pattern away. It bothered me, though. I loved that yarn so much that I at least wanted to have a plan in place to use it.

Queue the search of every single lace book and pattern that I own (which is a LOT) along with a lengthy exploration through Ravelry's pattern search.

Inspiration hit at long last....but it came with a healthy dose of humility.

Knitty published Elizabeth Freeman's Aeolian Shawl way back in 2009, and I've been obsessed with it every since then. I went so far as to purchase the beads, even though I didn't have yarn yet. The kicker was that I envisioned my version of the shawl in a beautiful olive green. I eventually found the yarn, but have since had to sell it because it had an alpaca base (dratted allergies). Honestly, I've spent a ridiculous amount of time searching for just the perfect shade of green yarn...because it HAD to be GREEN.

As I stared at my decidedly NOT green Mithril, and as I threaded a few beads - just to see what they would look like, mind, not because I seriously wanted a pink Aeolian - I felt the earth shift a bit under my feet.

Sometimes things just don't work.

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut with ideas we just can't let go of.

But...

If we admit we are wrong,

and if we allow ourselves to look again with fresh eyes and an open heart....